Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/36280 
Year of Publication: 
2010
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 4743
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We investigate whether time-persistent cultural borders impede economic exchange across regions of the same country. To measure cultural differences we evaluate, for the first time in economics, linguistic micro-data about phonological and grammatical features of German dialects. These data are taken from a unique linguistic survey conducted between 1879 and 1888 in 45,000 schools. Matching this information to 439 current German regions, we construct a dialect similarity matrix. Using a gravity analysis, we show that current cross-regional migration is positively affected by historical dialect similarity. This suggests that cultural identities formed in the past still influence economic exchange today.
Subjects: 
Dialects
language
culture
internal migration
gravity
Germany
JEL: 
R23
Z10
J61
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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